Police have applied to keep a Watford man’s expensive items and £62,874 worth of crypto-currency for longer in an international fraud investigation.

As part of the probe, 14 people were arrested in eastern England and thousands of pounds' worth of cash, assets, and cryptocurrency were seized in November, last year.

Arrests were made in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex and Kent, and court documents linked to the investigation have revealed that police seized a laundry list of items from a Watford man.

The Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU) applied for the further detention of seized property, linked to the man, on May 12. He has not been charged with any offences at this time, it confirmed.

The unit explained that, particularly with fraud cases, police often seize expensive items so that they can potentially be used to compensate victims of crime should those suspected of being involved ultimately be convicted.

The seized items included a Rolex, multiple phones, an Armani watch, various designer clothes, a PlayStation with five games, an Xbox, a computer, and the crypto asset worth £62,874.42, which is secured in a police-controlled wallet.

The “large-scale” ERSOU investigation involved fraudsters impersonating the phone numbers of legitimate institutions.

The numbers were available via the iSpoof website, which allowed users to buy services via crypto-currency, enabling them to impersonate the organisations and convince unbeknown victims to provide personal information.

Those arrested, who were aged between 17 and 28, were apprehended on suspicion of offences including fraud by false representation.

More than 200,000 potential victims in the UK alone have been directly targeted through the website, and at one stage almost 20 people a minute were being contacted by scammers hiding behind false identities using the site.

In total, more than 100 arrests have been made by law enforcement agencies across the country.

In December, Detective Inspector Mhairi Shurmer said: "These arrests form part of a huge international operation into a group which has fraudulently been targeting innocent people.

"The coordinated approach to tackling those involved has led to those suspected of being behind the website being apprehended, along with the people thought to be utilising the details the site contained."